HOLLYWOOD has been preoccupied this year with delivering one instantly forgettable movie after another, particularly in the shallow comic book and below-the-belt comedy genres.

Aside from The King’s Speech and Black Swan, it’s not been a vintage six months to date.

But here’s one proper, grown-up feature film that you won’t forget in a hurry – even it teaches you that the idea of a film which eschews conventional plot dynamics isn’t to your taste.

Only the fourth movie that the now 67-year-old director Terrence Malick has made since his auspicious debut with Martin Sheen’s Badlands (1973), The Tree Of Life is a lyrical and intensely visual study of human love and the ties that bind.

And of the beauty of the Earth that is not only all around us today, but which has been supporting life since long before we were even here.

At its best, this is a wonderfully photographed story of a family growing up in leafy 1950s Midwest suburbia where a father of three sons (Brad Pitt) believes in tough love and strictness.

Voicing a typical Malick narration, Jessica Chastain’s Mrs O’Brien explains the difference between living life with grace or as a force of nature.

The Tree Of Life will work best by reminding many viewers of their own childhoods, but its 139-minute running time is padded out with too many ‘world about us’ nature sequences.

Yes, they are beautiful to watch, but then so were many of the images in last month’s Ridley and Tony Scott-backed film Life In A Day, featuring footage shot by ordinary people around the world and likely to have far greater appeal to young people today.

Malick seems to be oblivious of the needs of an audience to have something to hold on to during his visions.

If only he’d kept one eye on the clock, his chosen stars alone could have made this a very big hit indeed.